UNH Goes Even Leftier for MLK Day 2009

My employer, the University of New Hampshire, has announced
the agenda for its 2009 celebration of Martin Luther King
Day, to which they are devoting two full weeks, from January 22 until
February 5.

(I blogged about 2006's events here and
2007's here.
Having nothing new to say, I skipped 2008.)

You might guess that, starting a couple days after the inauguration
of President Obama, UNH might present a largely celebratory, unifying
event, and some mention might be made of the progress made since King's
day, exemplified by the election of a president who (as he
once put it)
"doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."

Boy, would you be wrong.

Now, some things remain unchanged: the University will once again
sponsor a "Spiritual Celebration" at the local community church,
something it would never do for an actual religious holiday. As usual,
everything is dripping with sanctimony and tendentious
rhetoric about "social, political, and economic justice."
And while the events are billed as being in support of "University's goal
to cultivate an inclusive learning community of mutual respect and a
shared spirit of inquiry,"
just as in previous years, the sole voices invited to participate
are those from the left wing.
(More on that in a bit.)

This year's theme is "One in 100: Dismantling a Prison Nation".
It springs from the claim that the US has
"more than one in every 100 adults
confined behind bars." As you can guess from the wording,
there's no indication
that there just might be some room for sane discussion on
the issue. It's the newest cause, there's only one side, and dissent
will not be
on the agenda. For example, the "Educational Panel"
is billed this way:

A_____ D____, while advocating for a shift from punitive to restorative
justice in the way our criminal system addresses crime, asks the
question, Are Prisons Obsolete? Through productive
conversations with a prison warden, a social worker, legal
professionals, and academic scholars, audience members will have a
chance to examine the social, economic and political implications of
answering YES.

Fortunately, for the sake of the "learning community", the answer
has been worked out ahead of time. It's "YES."

But I've left out the best part. By which I mean: the worst part.

A_____ D____ above is Angela Davis, described on the page
as an "UC Berkeley professor
and internationally known civil rights activist".

One obvious botch: Davis was at UC Santa Cruz (from which she recently
retired) not Berkeley. And the
remainder of the description
is notable for what it doesn't say. Among the high
points, culled from Wikipedia and David Horowitz's
Discover the Networks page:

Angela Davis was a doctrinaire big-C Communist for many years, winning the Lenin
Prize from East Germany in 1979. She ran with
perennial CPUSA candidate Gus Hall
for Vice President on the
party's ticket in 1980 and 1984.
She remained with the Party until 1991 (Horowitz says she was expelled,
Wikipedia says she "broke" from the Party); the issue was the USSR coup
of "hard liners" against Gorbachev, which the CPUSA supported, and Davis
opposed.

But another claim to fame was her appearance on the FBI's Ten Most
Wanted List in 1970, only the third woman to achieve this honor.
She earned her spot having bought the guns used
in a hostage-taking at the Marin County courthouse, including the
shotgun used to blow a judge's head off. She remained at large for a
couple months, but was apprehended in New York. A year and a half later
she was acquitted of murder, kidnapping and criminal conspiracy charges.

As noted, since then Davis has gravitated to the usual employer
of last resort for violence-associated
leftists lacking more traditional job skills: in the Bill
Ayers/Bernardine Dohrn tradition, higher
education welcomed her with open arms. At UCSC since 1991,
she brought down a six-figure salary as a professor in
the—I swear I am not making this up—"History of
Consciousness"
Department. (Horowitz claims that historian Page Smith
established this program "to demonstrate that the Ph.D. is
fraud.") And of course, she continues to rack up $10K-$20K
per speaking engagement. (I don't know how much she's getting
from UNH.)

Since her Communist days, Davis claims now to favor "democratic
socialism". However, she "points to Cuba as an example of a country
which successfully addresses social and economic problems." So she
probably has a slightly different conception of democracy than what
we're used to.

Even more than usual,
UNH has chosen hard-left polarization and divisiveness for MLK Day 2009.
Davis's personal association with violence and with an ideology that
provided death, repression, and privation for those unfortunate
enough to come under its control make her an especially lousy
choice.

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